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PROLOGUE
“Fuck!” Casper muttered under his breath, his eyes wide as he stared out the front window of his car at the road before him. It was lit only by the beam of his vehicle’s headlights.
Inwardly, his brain was racing along as speedily as his car now hurtling swiftly along the narrow and winding lane.
Too speedily.
This was despite the fact he kept pressing his foot down on the brake pedal.
For whatever reason, and Casper had no time to get into that right now, those brakes weren’t responding.
Which meant his car wasn’t going to slow down or stop any time soon.
It was also true what people said: time did seem to go more slowly when death looked as if it could be imminent.
Casper continued to tightly grip the steering wheel even as he inwardly considered the only two possible scenarios open to him.
He could unfasten his seat belt, steer the car to the other side of the road, open the car door beside him, and simply throw himself out. Hoping he would land on the grass verge edging the lane. His car would have to take its chances of coming to a stop against the first available obstacle.
The problem with that was, if he missed landing on the grass, then he was going to hit the tarmacked lane with some speed. Hard.
He could try driving up onto the grass verge on this side of the road and into the low hedge running along the side of the road behind it. That way, the speeding car might have slowed slightly before it collided with the hedge and rather than going straight through it the car might slow down, maybe even come to a complete stop.
If it didn’t, then the car would, in all likelihood, go through the hedge and down the slope behind it. It might even roll over on its way down. With Casper still inside, which would cause considerable damage to both the car and him.
Despite that possibility, the latter of those options seemed like the best one to him. Even if, at six o’clock in the morning, the likelihood of anyone finding him for several hours along this countryside road was very unlikely.
Now all he had to decide was when would be the best time for him to veer the car off the road.
He knew this lane well, traveled on it two or three times a week, on his way to and from his family estate where he lived most of the time. Which was the reason he knew there was a sharp ninety-degree bend coming up soon, with an even steeper downward slope behind it than the one next to him if he didn’t manage to maneuver the car around that bend.
It was now or never, it seemed.
At least it would have been if he didn’t suddenly see another set of headlights coming toward him from the opposite direction!
A vehicle that, unfortunately, once it had completely turned the sharp corner ahead, proved to be a tractor, which was, as was usual with such a large vehicle, taking up two-thirds of the road. He doubted the farmer driving the tractor had expected to meet any traffic coming in the opposite direction this early in the morning either.
Casper quickly readjusted his options. They had now changed to hitting the tractor and bouncing off it, which would possibly injure the farmer in the process. Or Casper could turn the steering wheel to the left and veer the car off the road now and simply hope he avoided coming into contact with the tractor at all.
He didn’t hesitate to turn the steering wheel sharply to the nearside verge, hoping like hell he’d made the right choice.
That hope died an immediate death when he felt the front right-hand side of his car come into contact with the huge tractor wheel at the back of the vehicle. The impact easily spun his car so that it hit the hedge sideways on before plowing through it and then immediately rolling down the slope beyond.
The car tumbled over and over, throwing Casper from side to side so that his right side kept hitting the car door, although thankfully, the seat belt continued to hold, and the door remained closed.
Until one particularly vicious roll of the car caused Casper to hit his head painfully on the side window, and he was completely enfolded in darkness.
CHAPTER ONE
She recognized him the moment he walked into the spacious office on the top floor of the prestigious Kingston Security building.
Casper Kingston, the youngest member of that family.
The research she had done on all the members of the Kingston family had revealed this man was aged thirty-five and that he was the tech expert—read: hacker—in the family-run business. He was also reputed to be a charming and arrogantly self-confident rogue within a family of equally good-looking men. Their individual wealth also meant they were all millionaires several times over.
Casper’s handsome face was currently sporting the visible evidence of the cuts and bruises inflicted on him the previous week when, after the brakes had failed on his car, he’d had to drive it off the road at six o’clock in the morning to avoid colliding with the tractor coming in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, he’d then entered into an argument with a low hedge and the steep slope behind it.
The hedge and slope had won.
